Okay, really, what happened is that I accidentally left my phone on the kitchen table today instead of taking it with me to work, so I was bored on my lunch break and ended up figuring out how to start writing a story I've been trying to puzzle out for months.

The moral of this story: I need to spend less time on my phone.

If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. ~ Mark Twain

disgruntledpeony wrote:The moral of this story: I need to spend less time on my phone.

Seriously, though! I've recently taken up walking every day, and I don't use my phone, I don't have the internet, and I don't even listen to music. It's amazing what a brain will do when it doesn't have other things taking up its bandwidth.

disgruntledpeony wrote:The moral of this story: I need to spend less time on my phone.

Seriously, though! I've recently taken up walking every day, and I don't use my phone, I don't have the internet, and I don't even listen to music. It's amazing what a brain will do when it doesn't have other things taking up its bandwidth.

Trust me, I get it.

If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. ~ Mark Twain

At a workshop, Dave and his son (cannot remember his name) discussed creating anchors. I picked up swimming in January and of course -didn't have my phone. So, my mind wandered all on its own... Then I started anticipating it and thinking intentionally of scenes I wanted to figure out or questions i wanted answered...

Results were awesome. So when I got the chance to escape my humans, I took my laptop to the pool and pounded out 3,000 words in 3 hours.

AmytheAuthor wrote:At a workshop, Dave and his son (cannot remember his name) discussed creating anchors. I picked up swimming in January and of course -didn't have my phone. So, my mind wandered all on its own... Then I started anticipating it and thinking intentionally of scenes I wanted to figure out or questions i wanted answered...

Results were awesome. So when I got the chance to escape my humans, I took my laptop to the pool and pounded out 3,000 words in 3 hours.

Now to get an indoor pool and patrons to make noise in my backyard...

Exercise also helps the brain perform better.

So maybe a good q3 goal is to leave the phone and exercise more? ;)

I actually worked this into my morning routine. 1/2 hour on the treadmill listening to books on tape. Take shower while thinking about my WIP. Sit down and write for an hour.

My creative mind works best in the morning, but it needs to be fully awake. The exercise does that. The books on tape gives it something other than my WIP to chew on while it's waking up. It also feeds ideas for future stories.

For years that is how I wrote. I hardly ever typed out anything. A couple(literally) of times I tried I got stuck on which way the story should go, then it became too much like work.

I've started thinking in Notepad for things like this--just open up plain old Notepad and start typing to myself about what the problem is, what the options are, what are the plusses/minuses, and that usually lets me see which route interests me more--because yeah, any given story can go in dozens of directions.

So for example, these are the notes I wrote to myself for my last sale, The Bone Poet and God to the Sword & Sonnet anthology. It's about a bear climbing a mountain to seek God; bear society carves runes into the bones of living bears, and our protagonist only has 3 of her 4 carved. I knew she wanted to talk to God about it, I knew it had to be about that fourth rune, but what does she actually want to ask? What's going to be her final decision?

Is the quest to see if she can interrogate God about why she feels so lonely? The idea of a bone being uncarved by her father then going to get God to carve it then God tells her to do it herself is waaaay obvious and cheesy

Not yet carved her fourth--so is it a story about not knowing what you want to do with your life? About not knowing what others need you to do most? About defining yourself, about not having to define yourself? Perhaps she carves Mirror, or Water, or Mist, to reflect how she changes around people, becomes what they need.

Is it about being lonely--and so asking God what is the gap she needs to fill in to become complete, and become likeable? Apologise for incompleteness to badgers, use it as an excuse. So perhaps she needs God to tell her what it is--she feels so flawed, it could be anything, it needs God's omniscience--answer is to fill it with anything. It's not about what you're made up of, but knowing that you are already complete, having that confidence in yourself. I didn't make you incomplete; I make none of you incomplete.

Don't know what God's word was until they die--parents carve directly on to bone and so can tell them (or not!), but God's word remains hidden until death. Perhaps she needs to know what it is in order to complete her poem perfectly? Is that why she's worried? Overthinking it and won't just let it flow, because her talent is to pick the best word? Becomes about paralysis of choice, and sometimes there are many choices, and none of them is wrong. Just choose, and move forward. Have her respond that she still doesn't know! So God says well, any will do then; how about Frost? And bear pouts, what's wrong? I was hoping you'd pick... Oh. Quite, says God.

But how is that a larger conflict? Does it need to be? Needs to be a battle poet somehow still. Is she the first bear to try and use magic non offensively? Is that why the badgers are so nervous? Does she make her word "friend"?

Perhaps her decision then is not to carve a word but carve a modifier--a suffix--"ing", so that when she dies, her bones can be used to make a spell last, and she will dedicate her life now to peace BUT IN A LESS CHEESY WAY like, say she wants everyone to get on--Bear society is too fractured, so she needs to cast a spell to make them get on?

Not going to tell you which way I went, though; I'll let you buy the anthology to find out ;) (seriously, the ToC is amazing, I can't wait to read it myself)

Hmm, I have the story for this quarter ever so close to being done. I didn't start it for this contest, or any other one, but as a fun where to show off what I have learned. But it's better than I expected, at least for me it's a bit of a twist, a little different. Which is why maybe, perhaps and mayhaps Dave will like it. It might be a bit on the short side for him, but I will take that chance. It's as long as it needs to be.

It may not be but I think of it as a collision between two different genre. If you that curious on which two e-mail

Now the writing is another story. I am probably overly proud of it without any substance for the pride.

My Q3 is ready (Ish. Sorta. Kinda. Maybe) for readers if anyone has time to take a look. I'm hoping to submit before the third week of June as I have a conference at the end of the month where I'm theoretically pitching my novel to agents and need ample time to twitch and polish for that. I'm always down to read, just send them my way.

thebluesquire wrote:I'm in. Probably my last story for a while, having a baby really puts a kink in my writing schedule, but I'll keep trying. Best of luck everyone!

HM - 1R - 1

Finding time to write when you have small kids is very very very difficult. Remember... Family First. ...Writing will still be here. And if you play your cards right, you don't have to give up writing at all. Just scale it back a bit. ..

Anyway.. congrats on being a mom or mum or dad.

OK... time for me to go pick up my own kids from school. ...good luck with your entry.